My dad’s library was the first one I raided — Greek mythology first, then the French, English, and Russian classics, more or less in the order they sat on the shelf. I never got through all of it, but I was building a collection of my own long before I was big enough to qualify for a card at the local library. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. At around ten, I got busted for “borrowing” the Kama Sutra off my dad’s shelf. He didn’t lecture me. He just told me to put it back, and my body still remembers the embarrassment perfectly well — which, come to think of it, is the whole premise of the rest of this site.

I still think The Master and Margarita, The Red and the Black, and Vanity Fair (Thackeray’s, not the magazine’s) are among the most brilliant things anyone has written. These days I gravitate toward Indian philosophy, the Stoics, and books on quantum physics. And don’t forget Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which I read aloud to my son and laugh at until I cry.

This is my bookshelf — the place where I keep the ones I’ve gone back to more than once. I have too much respect for anyone who actually finishes writing a book to pan it. So I only mention the ones I loved. If I’m quiet about a book, that’s the review. Lately I’ve been turning over the idea of writing one myself. I’m still waiting for the clarity to gather my scattered thoughts and overactive imagination into something with a spine.